Constraint Decay: The Fragility of LLM Agents in Backend Code Generation
Large Language Model (LLM) agents demonstrate strong performance in autonomous code generation under loose specifications. However, production-grade software requires strict adherence to structural constraints, such as architectural patterns, databases, and object-relational mappings. Existing benchmarks often overlook these non-functional requirements, rewarding functionally correct but structurally arbitrary solutions. We present a systematic study evaluating how well agents handle structural constraints in multi-file backend generation. By fixing a unified API contract across 80 greenfield generation tasks and 20 feature-implementation tasks spanning eight web frameworks, we isolate th...
| Authors | Francesco Dente, Dario Satriani, Paolo Papotti |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.SE |
| Published | 7 May 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 18 September 2026 |
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